I lost all my saved documents, pictures, ect...after reinstall of

[dreen]

I came home to find that my computer had crashed...i read the trouble
shooting guide and reinstalled my OS and now have lost everything in my
computer...is there a way to recover what is lost....it is acting like a new
computer...empty

 

[philo]

I came home to find that my computer had crashed...i read the trouble
shooting guide and reinstalled my OS and now have lost everything in my
computer...is there a way to recover what is lost....it is acting like a new
computer...empty

Your data are now gone.

There is *no way* to get it back.


Sorry, but that's the truth.

You have now learned why you are supposed to backup your data!


Next time you have a problem be sure to ask first!

 

[Elmo]

I came home to find that my computer had crashed.. I read the trouble
shooting guide and reinstalled my OS and now have lost everything in my
computer. Is there a way to recover what is lost? It is acting like a new
computer, empty.

OEM versions wipe the drive when you do their (destructive) install.
But you may be able to restore some of the destroyed files:

Download and run Restoration or another Undelete program. The more you
use the hd with the deleted files, the more data you overwrite, so you
should download the program to a flash drive, or floppy.

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html
http://www.recuva.com/

 

[philo]

OEM versions wipe the drive when you do their (destructive) install.
But you may be able to restore some of the destroyed files:

Download and run Restoration or another Undelete program. The more you
use the hd with the deleted files, the more data you overwrite, so you
should download the program to a flash drive, or floppy.

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html
http://www.recuva.com/

If it were just a case of file deletion
or even a case of the drive being formatted ...and nothing else...
the data recovery software would probably work

Unfortunately...if the drive was formatted
and the OS reloaded the chances of recovering anything at all would be
pretty close to zero.

Will it hurt anything to try the data recovery software? No
it won't hurt to try.
But do not expect any positive results

 

[Roy Smith]

I came home to find that my computer had crashed...i read the trouble
shooting guide and reinstalled my OS and now have lost everything in my
computer...is there a way to recover what is lost....it is acting like a
new
computer...empty

This is the wonderful thing about computers, no matter how old you are
you'll always learn something new. So what have we learned today? The
importance of making a backup image of your hard drive on a regular basis.
If you had made regular backups of your hard drive all you would have had to
do was simply do a restore from your latest backup and you wouldn't have
lost much. Just whatever changes had been made since the last backup and
that's all.

Though since you didn't and you did a restore, and I'm assuming it's an OEM
restore which formats the drive and restores the to PC to a state similar to
when you first turned it on, then you've lost everything. So now you have
the burden of reinstalling all the programs that you had before the restore,
ugh! With a backup, the PC would be in the same state it was in when the
backup was made, and you wouldn't have to reinstall anything. Just whatever
programs you had installed since the last backup.

So I would recommend buying the largest external USB hard drive that you can
afford, along with a backup program such as Acronis True Image and get in
the habit of making backups on a regular basis. You'll never know when
you'll need them! Another option would be to use one of the online data
backup services such as Carbonite.com where it would at least make backup
copies of your pictures, documents, and other user created data.

 

[Rockingham500]

I came home to find that my computer had crashed...i read the trouble
shooting guide and reinstalled my OS and now have lost everything in my
computer...is there a way to recover what is lost....it is acting like a new
computer...empty

Download, File Restore Professional, and run an Advanced Scan on your
drive. This will recover all of your PC files and directory trees as
they were before your computer crashed. You can download it here:
www.pcrecovery.com

 

[Richard in AZ]

I came home to find that my computer had crashed...i read the trouble
shooting guide and reinstalled my OS and now have lost everything in my
computer...is there a way to recover what is lost....it is acting like a new
computer...empty

Download, File Restore Professional, and run an Advanced Scan on your
drive. This will recover all of your PC files and directory trees as
they were before your computer crashed. You can download it here:
www.pcrecovery.com

Rockingham, you are being overly optimistic.
If the OP had run the program before he reformatted and reinstalled, he might have recovered most of
his files.
The longer he uses the computer now, the less likely he is to recover anything of value.

It always amazes me the number of people who feel their hard drives will last forever and fail to
backup those personal files that can not be replaced with commercial software.

 

[philo]

Download, File Restore Professional, and run an Advanced Scan on your
drive. This will recover all of your PC files and directory trees as
they were before your computer crashed. You can download it here:
www.pcrecovery.com

Rockingham, you are being overly optimistic.
If the OP had run the program before he reformatted and reinstalled, he might have recovered most of
his files.
The longer he uses the computer now, the less likely he is to recover anything of value.

It always amazes me the number of people who feel their hard drives will last forever and fail to
backup those personal files that can not be replaced with commercial software.

Yep

I agree 100%

Once a drive has been formatted and reloaded...
the chances of recovering anything at all is pretty close to zero (if not
actually zero)

But I guess there's no harm in trying